You have always been a friend to Cassius, and to this family.
I am well aware that the friendship between yourself and my son has been strained since his return. I do not know what transpired on your visit to the estate, nor would I think to ask the reason for your hasty retreat that night. It is not my business to pry into my son's personal dealings, however there is now a reason for me to write you, something I know Cassius would not forgive me for, but I can think of nothing else.
You and my son were closest of friends, your bond so strong before he left for South America or wherever it truly was his studies took him from us for so long. I must plead to your history with Cassius that you set aside whatever it is that happened that night and come to the estate at once. There has been another accident. Cassius has refused proper medical treatment, and has insisted on using his damn technological designs, and other things I barely understand, but know enough to question. I plead you to stop this madness, talk to Cassius, make him see he needs help.
Since your visit, Cassius has become more and more withdrawn. He has taken to excursions into the city at all hours of the day and night, at times returning exhausted and obviously worse for wear. Each time, he would seclude himself in his study or lab, and emerge sometimes days later babbling on about some new discovery that would help him cleanse the world's problems, I believe that's how he would put it. But it never seemed to be enough for him, and the cycle never ending. This changed last week. He returned early on a Sunday morning, roused the house with his hollers, and seemed jubilant. He was not making much sense, not even truly saying what it was that had maybe made him so ecstatic. I had hoped at first it was a young woman, that perhaps he had found someone who could get him to settle down, behave in a more distinguished manner. But no, he would only say he had made some new discovery, some new revelation, and rushed off to his study to do whatever it is he does in there for so long.
The sounds that have come from that room! I know at times it is his voice I hear, his speaking, but the guttural noises and horrible sounds that seep forth from between those locked doors are so unlike any human language I have ever heard, so horrible the sounds and croaking groans it has frightened away some of our best help. This past Sunday, however, was like no other time any in this house have heard. In the end it was our gardner, Mr. Halstrum who with some of the stronger men in our charge brought the door down at the sight of smoke from beneath it filling the hallway. How he was not in critical condition, how he has been able to continue on without a hospital, I have no idea. He has spent most of his time working now with researchers from the factory remotely from his lab, and they are preparing him for some kind of procedure next week.
His father would have known how to end this, but I'm afraid I simply cannot reach him alone. I was beside myself with grief at the loss of my boy's beautiful face, but he was still my son. After his father passed, I would not have believed another event like this would come so closely on its heels. My beautiful Cassius, his arms, his legs, his skin... I implore you, please set aside your differences this one time and come to the estate, see Cassius, and talk some sense into him.
-Amanda Diabolis
My dearest friend,
Deepest apologies for my prolonged absence, old friend. So much has happened since school, I am sure you have many questions, and I swear to answer each one when the time comes. First, I must ask you some of my own, questions that have arisen since my return, borne of the faces and words of my family. Presumably, what I have come to be is not what is socially accepted in their world. Perhaps in any world. I have been places, done things, seen things... both beautiful and terrible, so awesome in both power and fright I dare not convey it in text... I digress.
Do you fear the darkness? The unknown void? An instinctive adrenal rush of flight response from staring into the blackest corners of your world, to run from the unseen shapes nature has eons of foundation lain in your very being to be afraid of? Do you reject change? A steadfast denial of progress? Do you hold firm in your beliefs of the boundaries of this life, an impenetrable dike protecting the preserved past within your little life?
Are these not the same? Darkness and change! Can you not see, progress and the unknown, these are the same!
You do well to fear them, my friend. I have seen mere glimpses of the things nature has kept you running from across the eons. Ancient things, formless things, long cast out from this world to shadows far darker and deeper than any this sun can cast. Maddening things. Powerful things.
Are you religious? Whom do you worship? A higher being? A government? Science? Yes, science. What else could it be? It has its dogmas, its rejection of the unexplainable, of the impossible. Stare long enough and hard enough into the darkest of the dark and you will find impossible things remain unhindered by your steadfast disbelief in them, unharmed by your 300 page proofs they cannot exist. Yet they do. I have fallen far from the flock of my teacher's holy tomes, the books and libraries are to me no more truth than the writings of some new-age cult leader bent on blinding his followers to the greater world.
This world, my friend, is not [u]only[u] one of patriotism, god, and science. Here too are magics both wondrous and terrible to tease and taunt the staunch practitioners of the approved worships of deity, country, and logic.
It may surprise you, I reject this too. The worlds of the Arcane and Occult, they too are rife with dogmatic lines of what can and cannot be. They too are wrong, ultimately. No boundaries exist, no limits are upon us but those which we allow ourselves to become tangled in.
Have you seen the wonders of the scientific world? The amazing feats we have accomplished in the realms from simple metallurgy to the most complex robotics and cybernetics? Of course you have my friend, those many years you came faithfully to see my latest creations and the works of my family's factories. Have you seen the power of the alchemist? The simple beauty of a dying art, imbuing the simplest and rarest of ingredients with the blessings of the ages? No, I suppose I have been gone far too long, chasing these other powers and unearthing the unspeakable texts long lost to find the truths I seek. But what if these things, these things so dedicated to the denouncing of each other, were both truths? The magics of the Occult, the altering strengths and weird concoctions of the alchemist, the marvels and wonders of cybernetics and sciences! What if they were ALL right? Science, augmented by the arcane, bound by the alchemical, and powered by the occult? A limb lost and returned through the might of cybernetics, not so much as controlled by the mind of the patient, but outright becoming [u]PART[u] of them! their very spirit and being merging with the device, a part of them as any other limb? The materials lighter, faster, stronger... beyond any possible achievement of mere science alone, but augmented to the point of The Übermensch, super human levels? Not merely through science, or through magiks, but both?
My friend, I have such wonders to tell you, such marvels and terrors... Oh my dear friend, I have such things to show you, maddening things...
But, I forget myself. These are not the reasons I write to you today.
While I was... away... there was an accident. Perhaps a lesson to be learned, as I barely escaped with my life, my mind, intact. Suffice to say, like any scientific endeavor, precautions must win over the excitement of discovery, lest disaster strike. Even something simple as observing the sun for too long can result in irreparable damage. I suppose I never once stopped to imagine staring too long into the darkness would have similar result...
Thankfully, I can report with full confidence that my designs for facial augmentation and replacement through cybernetics are a complete success. I can as well declare my theories on the true merging of science and flesh to replace and even augment, are also quite correct.
I know you will understand more clearly when we meet again. I will have the car sent for you at your earliest convenience. I look forward to being in your company again, old friend, and once again looking upon you with my own... well... it has been a long, long time.
-Doctor Cassius Diabolis